MARQUETTE – Day 14

Bay City, MI to Mackinaw City, MI, 190 miles by Model A, and Mackinaw City to Mackinac Island, 10 miles by catamaran.  Took mostly back roads paralleling Interstate 75 today, saw lots of trees and little towns and lots of trees. No wonder Henry Ford came up here to make his charcoal. Lots of straight runs like this. Stopped in Westbranch for breakfast at the little local Downtown Cafe, and had a really big breakfast for a pittance. Patti ordered egg, cake & meat which turned out to be eggs, pancake and sausage! Bill and Linda split an omelet, and still got two huge plates full. Patti has been looking for a quilt store for days, and finally found one.  (I only got 15 min unlike 2 hours in car museums) Arrived in Mackinaw City just in time to catch the 2:30 ferry, parked the cars, grabbed the luggage and made it to the dock in time. That’s our ferry in the background. Kept an eye on the skipper to make sure he didn’t ding anything, he didn’t, but it was really funny, that this big thing was maneuvered by this little set of controls. A joy stick and 3 buttons.  (Not counting all the stuff to get the engines going, etc.) Here on Mackinac, this is rush hour. (By the way, no motor vehicles.) But they do have a few bicycles. More bikes than people I think. Everything is delivered by bicycles or horses even UPS. Our B and B has a fine veranda for us A folk to sit on. Oh, every other store is a homemade fudge store. Some of us are shopping for larger size clothes. Some new A members here, the DalCantos and the Holombos.  Kicked up our heels in the Yankee Rebel Tavern tonight. Tomorrow, sightseeing, and gotta get one of those bicycles.